Epstein-Barr virus infection and breast invasive ductal carcinoma in Egyptian women: A single center experience

A controversy of the role of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection in breast carcinomas has been reported in the literature. We carried on this research to explore possible association between EBV infection and breast invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) in Egyptian women attending our center. This study carried out at Sohag university hospital on 84 paraffin embedded samples of breast tissue, of them 42 breast IDC as the case group and 42 breast fibroadenomas as the control group. Nested PCRand immunohistochemistry (IHC) done separately for all samples to identify the Epstein-Barr nuclear antigen-1 (EBNA-1) gene and EBV latent membrane protein-1 (LMP-1) respectively, in breast cancer cells and controls. Specimen considered positive when both (EBNA-1) gene and LMP-1 were detected using PCR and IHC separately for the same sample, this was achieved by 10/42 (23.81%) of breast IDC (case group) and 6/42 (14.29%) of breast fibro-adenomas (control group) (P-value=0.4). Nodal involvement was the only parameter that demonstrated a significant statistical relationship with EBV presence in cancerous tissue with p-value=0.003. Our research could not find a significant statistical association between EBV infection and breast IDC in Egyptian women attending our center, but, there might be an association between the existence of EBV and tumor aggressiveness.